Thursday, 29 June 2017

My Cringiest Blog Posts

As many of you will know, I've been blogging for ten years or so, and everyone knows that the younger you are, the less of a 'filter' you have, not to mention less of an ability to spell or to run a blog to the same standard that you can ten years later... I know many bloggers and vloggers delete their old content or at least make it private, and to be honest I've considered doing the same, but I always end up leaving it there. I've made no effort to hide my old blog posts - the archive is always readily available, just over there to your right. This doesn't mean that I'm not embarrassed by some of them, because I am, but I'd like them to stay. I like knowing that I can easily read about what I was getting up to so long ago if ever I want to, and I feel like it gives this place an extra dimension.

You know when you're down to two scheduled posts, and you're so desperate for blog post ideas that you end up deciding that embarrassing yourself is the only way forward? That. You know what I'm going to say next, don't you?

Let's take a trip down memory lane and look at my old blog posts! To whet your appetite, a couple of hilarious anecdotes from my old blog that apparently needed entire blog posts to themselves...

Yeah, this is what you're getting into by reading the rest of this post. I hope you're ready.

First up, I thought it'd be appropriate to share my first ever post on this blog, which is a review of Bindi Babes by Narinder Dhami. Excellent author, excellent book... and a review, posted on 1st December 2009, consisting of three very short paragraphs and the words, "I highly recommend it to anyone who absolutely loves Narinder Dhami books!" YES, I RECOMMENDED THE BOOK TO PEOPLE WHO WOULD HAVE BOUGHT THE BOOK ANYWAY. I also made sure to note that the book had "happy parts, sad parts [and] funny parts" because when I asked for advice on how to write book reviews, I was told to mention how it made me feel and, um, I don't think such a vague sentence listing three emotions that I didn't even attribute to myself is quite what they meant. If you look in the dictionary, you'll find me under 'vague'.

Next is a post titled 'Book Swag', which from the URL you can see was originally called 'Some Great Gifts', published on 14th January 2010. Neither of them are particularly intriguing titles, are they? The post is a short one (surprise!) consisting of four grainy, dimly-lit photos taken on an ancient Nintendo DSi. The first sentence - of two, you understand - uses an EMOTICON. No, not an emoji, an EMOTICON. Made of PUNCTUATION. Good god.

The cringe is not over. Published on 2nd February 2010 was my review of Luisa Plaja's Split by a Kiss, a book I adored but to which I only dedicated a two-paragraph review. Writing at length is something I genuinely really struggled with when I was younger, and still do to some extent - this is partly why I binned my dream of ever writing a novel partway through my teenage years (that dream has since returned, I might add!) I suppose the review isn't the worst, but I don't think I could have been any more vague. Are you sensing a theme here? I'm going to interrupt this cringe-fest to give myself some credit, because just a month later you can already see that my reviews are slightly improving. It's still very short, but my review of Paper Towns by John Green in March 2010 is sliiightly more detailed, and you can tell - well, I can at least - that I'm trying!

Skipping forward to 2012, I'd twigged the existence of ~seasonal content~ and published a list of my top 5 romance books on Valentine's Day. Admittedly, in my old age, I don't remember three of them, so... that's awkward. Who's up for an updated version next year?

It gets a little less cringe from there, and I just stumbled across my 'Design Timeline: 2009-2013' post which is genuinely quite interesting. As I say in the post, it's fascinating (for me, anyway) to see the change in blog designs which correlates with me getting older and developing my own style. It also amazes me to see that I've only ever had four blog designs, including this one, in nearly a decade. Just a heads up: I've been desperate for a new one for about a year now, so a fifth and hopefully final design might be happening soon. You know, when I stop being lazy. (I'm too fussy and no design I've seen perfectly fits the image in my mind, that's the problem.)

So, there we have it. If you want more cringe with a hint of nostalgia, check out my latest video below in which I read a bunch of old stories I wrote, aged six. It's... weird. And vaguely disturbing in places. Don't say I didn't warn you.

How long have you been blogging? Do you have any cringe stories to share?

18 year old book blogger who aspires to work in journalism and/or publishing, and dreams of one day seeing her own work on bookshelves around the world. Amber has been running The Mile Long Bookshelf single-handedly since 2009.

Ugh, so many cringe posts. I recently convinced a friend that he should start up his own blog and he was a bit nervous ... so he asked if he could read some of MY first blog posts to have a better understanding of my writing style 11 years ago just starting out. And so before agreeing I reread them and oh my god, Amber. I read them and cried. All of the blog posts in that first year of blogging. None of them are good. Not one.

UKYA Champion Teen Blogger 2015

Future8 Blogger Award 2014

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